1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a semiconductor device including an oxide semiconductor, a display device including the semiconductor device, and manufacturing methods thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various metal oxides are used for a variety of applications. Indium oxide is a well-known material and is used as a light-transmitting electrode material which is necessary for a liquid crystal display or the like.
Some metal oxides have semiconductor characteristics. As metal oxides having semiconductor characteristics, for example, tungsten oxide, tin oxide, indium oxide, zinc oxide, and the like can be given. A thin film transistor in which such a metal oxide having semiconductor characteristics is used for a channel formation region has been disclosed (Patent Documents 1 to 4, and Non-Patent Document 1).
Further, not only single-component oxides but also multi-component oxides are known as metal oxides. For example, InGaO3(ZnO)m (m is a natural number) having a homologous series is known as a multi-component oxide semiconductor including In, Ga, and Zn (Non-Patent Documents 2 to 4).
In addition, it is confirmed that an oxide semiconductor including such an In—Ga—Zn-based oxide can be used for a channel layer of a thin film transistor (Patent Document 5, and Non-Patent Documents 5 and 6).
In a conventional technique, amorphous silicon or polycrystalline silicon has been used for a thin film transistor (TFT) provided for each pixel of an active matrix liquid crystal display. However, in place of these silicon materials, attention has been attracted to a technique for manufacturing a thin film transistor including such a metal oxide semiconductor as described above. Examples of the techniques are disclosed in Patent Document 6 and Patent Document 7, where a thin film transistor is manufactured using zinc oxide or an In—Ga—Zn—O-based oxide semiconductor for a metal oxide semiconductor film and is used as a switching element or the like of an image display device.